Changelog

What changed—and why.

Release notes are bundled from the same source used inside ChatMD Studio, so the website and installed app cannot quietly tell two different stories.

v0.5.0
Current

Office files now open and edit inside ChatMD Studio

Word, Excel and PowerPoint files open in the app. Edit document text and structure, spreadsheet rows and cells, and slide content without first converting the file to Markdown.
Formatting, styles, lists, tables, headers, footers, pictures and common Office document structure are preserved while you work.
PDF forms can be filled in and saved from the PDF viewer.
The SQLite viewer is now a browser with schema details, sorting, paging and export.
PowerPoint and Excel join the local conversion tools, so those files can be brought into the vault without uploading them.

v0.4.12

Changes to a PDF can be undone one at a time, and redone

Undo and Redo for PDFs. Reverting used to be all-or-nothing — it put the file back exactly as you opened it, which was the only way back, so making three changes and disliking the third lost all three. Undo now steps back one change at a time and Redo goes forward again, for when you press undo once too often. Revert is still there and still means all the way back; it only appears once that differs from Undo.
Typing [@ suggests your citation keys, matching on the title as well as the key — because what you remember about a book is its name. It fills in the key alone. Keep a .bib file in your vault and it is read automatically.
New notes can start from a template without going through the command palette: the chevron beside New opens the list, including any templates in your vault’s Templates folder. Pressing New, and Ctrl+N, still give you a blank document immediately.
A folder containing a browser profile no longer fills the file tree with that browser’s own databases.
A custom AI command that does not exist now says so when you set it, rather than working until the moment you press a button.
Fixed: converting into your vault could be redirected outside it if the Converted folder had been replaced with a shortcut to somewhere else.

v0.4.11

Convert works on files that are not already in your notes folder

Converting a folder from anywhere else — the Desktop, Downloads, an email export — used to fail on every file with "Path is outside the selected vault". The page invited a whole folder at once and then refused the commonest case there is. Files you pick or drag in are now read; a path the app was merely handed, rather than shown, is still refused.
Converted notes land in your vault, in a Converted folder, so search, the Brain and Ask can all see them straight away. Files already in the vault stay beside their original, where they were. A finished batch offers what to do next: open it, hand the pile to Teach, ask questions about it, or see it in the Brain.
Combining notes into one book accepts files from outside the vault too — it was refusing exactly what converting had just started accepting.
PDF highlights and sticky notes can be clicked, re-worded and deleted. Adding them worked; changing your mind did not.
The Brain keeps notes with no links in view instead of flinging them to the corners. They still sit apart from the linked structure, because being unlinked is a real thing worth seeing.
Privacy and terms are proper web pages now, with a governing-law and a termination clause, instead of files in a source repository.
Licence keys and the built-in updater are gone. Nothing in the app phones anywhere.
Citations: keep a .bib file in your vault, write [@key] in a note, and exports get a reference list.

v0.4.10

The app icon is sharp again, everywhere Windows draws it

The Start menu, the taskbar and the app list were drawing a blurry icon, or none at all. A packaged Windows app needs a compiled resource index naming an icon at each size, and the package never had one.
Convert says plainly that every conversion runs on this computer, and it is on the Home screen where somebody new actually looks.
Mixed piles of files were always convertible in one click — a PDF, a spreadsheet and a note together, each to its own format. The page was not saying so, so the disabled "convert all to" menu read as a refusal.

v0.4.9

Two ways a shared folder could run code on your machine, closed

A vault someone sends you could run commands on your computer. Git lets a repository name a program to run whenever it needs to read a file as text, and viewing a note’s history did exactly that — including from the automatic nightly job, where nobody is watching. Both routes are closed and proved closed by running a real payload against them.
Saving is safer in three ways. The main Save button was writing notes without the protections the app has everywhere else, including the check that stops it overwriting an edit made in Obsidian; autosave was skipping that check entirely for any note you opened by any route except the file tree; and pressing Ctrl+S then made the next autosave report a conflict against the app’s own write.
Links: typing [[ now suggests note names, and the Links panel shows notes that mention this one without linking to it, with a button to make the link.
Changes can now show the history of just the note you are reading, not only the whole vault.
Ctrl+Z now works after every editor action. Inserting a link, indenting, continuing a list, bold, and the Insert menu were all permanent — undo did nothing at all afterwards.
Long lines no longer scroll the whole document sideways, the Navigator’s six tabs are all reachable on a laptop screen, and the Settings window fits on a 900-pixel-tall display.
A formatting toolbar in the editor: bold, italic, code, link, headings, lists, tasks, quote and table. All of it worked as keyboard shortcuts before and none of it was visible.
Settings is a proper page rather than a cramped dialog, and your licence now has its own section instead of being buried under About.
Quick Insert shows what each item actually inserts, and no longer offers the checklists the toolbar now does.
Fixed: the file tree’s row menu and every tab’s close button could not be reached with the keyboard at all — both were a button nested inside another button.

v0.4.8

Your notes are much harder to lose, and the editor does what you expect

Renaming or moving a note can no longer overwrite another one. Windows replaces the destination silently when a name collides — so this used to destroy the note that was already there, with a "Renamed to…" message on top. It now refuses and tells you why.
Unsaved work is offered back. The app was quietly snapshotting open documents the whole time but only ever read them after a crash, so quitting from the tray lost everything while the snapshot sat on disk. Now it asks before quitting, and offers anything left over next time you open it.
If something else edits a note while you have it open — Obsidian, or the Teach pass — saving no longer wipes that change. Saves are also atomic, so a crash mid-save cannot leave a half-written file.
Pictures in your notes actually appear. Relative image paths never resolved before, so every embedded image showed a broken box. They are served only from inside the folder you opened.
Formatting shortcuts: Ctrl+B, Ctrl+I, and Ctrl+K to link a selection. Inserts can be undone with Ctrl+Z now — they could not before.
The two panes in Split view scroll together, and the divider can be moved with the arrow keys.
Wiki-links no longer care about capitals, so [[settlehawk]] finds SettleHawk.md instead of showing as a broken link. ![[Embeds]], ==highlights== and the rest of the Obsidian callout types render properly.
Git, Antigravity and Codex can each be installed from inside the app, with a progress bar, instead of sending you to a download page or a terminal command.
A Usage tab showing what each assistant has actually cost you, split by tool.

v0.4.7

Ask remembers, Canvas opens, and every flagged claim shows its real age

Ask keeps your conversations. Follow-ups continue the thread, "New" starts a fresh one, and you can rename or delete any of them. They are stored in the app, never in your notes — deleting one cannot lose anything from your vault.
Every answer now shows when it was asked. An answer is only true of your notes as they were at that moment, and a thread you come back to weeks later is unreadable without it.
Vault health shows when each flagged line was actually last written, read from your Git history. Nothing is written into your notes to work this out — which makes it both safer and more trustworthy than a date typed into the file.
Canvas (.canvas) and Bases (.base) files from Obsidian now open properly instead of showing raw data. Read-only, so nothing here can damage a document Obsidian made.
Teach can clip a web page: paste a link and it fetches the article, dropping navigation, cookie banners and share buttons before anything is digested.
A Get Help page with answers to the questions that actually come up, and a way to reach a human.
Ask is now in the main toolbar and on the Home screen. It was the best thing here and you had to know it existed to find it.
Each AI shows in its own colour, so you can see at a glance which one answered.

v0.4.6

Ask your notes, choose your AI, and check the vault for free

Ask your notes a question and get an answer built only from your own files, with a link to every note it came from. If your notes do not answer it, it says so rather than guessing.
Choose which AI does the work — Claude Code, Codex, Ollama, or any command you like. Settings shows which are actually installed on your machine. The same choice drives both Ask and Teach.
Vault health: unresolved links, notes nothing links to, claims that say "currently" without saying when, and dated claims that have aged. It runs entirely on your machine — no AI, no network, nothing sent anywhere — so it costs nothing and works with no AI set up at all.
A first-run screen that actually sets you up: what a vault is, every AI option with install instructions, and how to turn on change tracking. Bring it back any time with "Show Welcome".
A command line, so the same checks can run on a schedule without opening the app. Settings shows the commands with your folder already filled in.
New folder, new file, rename, move and save-into-vault now work. They relied on a dialog Electron does not provide, so they had never worked in an installed build.
ChatMD is free and stays free. There is now a quiet Support link for anyone who wants to help.

v0.4.5

Both sidebars work again, and Changes is its own page

Clicks and scrolling in either side panel did nothing while it was open as a drawer. An invisible layer meant to catch clicks outside the panel was sitting on top of it instead, so every button press closed the panel rather than pressing the button. Fixed on both sides.
New folder, new file, rename, move and save-into-vault had never worked in an installed build — they all relied on a dialog Electron does not provide, and every one of them failed with “Something went wrong”. They now use a real dialog.
Changes is a full-width view: commits, the files each one touched, and the diff, side by side. Reach it from Home, the command palette, or the Full page button in the panel.
History reads as history now. Days are headings instead of “Today” repeated forty times, and repeated runs of the automated maintenance job fold into one row, so the changes somebody actually made stop being needles.
Templates: keep your own in a Templates folder in the vault. They can fill in {{title}}, {{date}} and {{time}}.
Daily notes: Ctrl+Shift+D opens today’s note, creating it the first time.
The Brain can be narrowed to one tag or folder, and its counts then describe what you are actually looking at.
Browse the vault by tag, in the Navigator.
Home, Brain, Teach and Changes were being drawn into half the window, with the other half permanently blank. They now use the whole width.

v0.4.4

Clicking a change opens the file

In Changes, clicking a filename now opens that file. It used to show a diff instead — below the file list, usually below the fold in a narrow panel, so the click appeared to do nothing at all.
The diff is its own button now, which is what the diff icon already looked like. That freed the room filenames needed: they were being squeezed down to a single character.
Opening the same filename in a second commit shows that commit’s diff, rather than closing the panel.

v0.4.3

Security fixes found by an independent review

A folder someone sends you can no longer run commands on your machine. Git lets a repository name a program to run when a diff is displayed; opening such a folder and viewing a change in the Changes panel executed it. Closed and tested with a working payload.
The ingest run no longer has any shell access at all — not even git. It could previously commit, and committing runs whatever scripts a repository has configured, which amounts to running arbitrary commands. The commit is now made by the app itself with those scripts disabled.
The vault boundary was not a boundary: with a vault on C:, paths on any other drive or network share were treated as inside it. Rewritten to compare paths properly, and it now also stops rejecting legitimate filenames beginning with dots.
Saving over an existing file is restricted to Markdown files, closing an unguarded write-anywhere path.
Git operations time out instead of hanging forever when a vault lives on an unreachable network share.

v0.4.2

A Brain that uses the whole window, and a hardening pass

The Brain was getting a quarter of a tall screen — a grid reserved a row for a tab strip that is not there. It now fills the window, and the layout spreads to the shape of your canvas instead of sitting as a circle in the middle of it.
In Changes, filenames were being squeezed to a single character. They get the full width now.
Security: the window can no longer navigate away from the app under any circumstance, the embedded-browser tag is explicitly off, and a dependency with a known denial-of-service flaw was pinned to its patched version.
SECURITY.md now describes what the app actually does rather than a subset of it.

v0.4.1

Rails that do the work, and a vault you can search by name

The side rail now carries New, Open, Save and Theme while the panel is collapsed, and the top bar drops them — twelve buttons down to eight on a narrow window.
Panels open on click only. They used to fly open on hover as well, so they appeared when you were passing through, and the button you were reaching for closed them again.
Clicking away closes an open drawer. Previously the only exits were the rail button and Escape, which nothing on screen mentions.
The vault tree has a filter box — type a few letters to find a note by name, with matching folders expanded for you.
Read view can show where a page came from without leaving Read view.
Stacked split view has a visible seam and sticky pane headers, so the two halves stop reading as one long document.
This screen. Updates used to install silently and never say what changed.

v0.4.0

Home, Teach, and a portrait-monitor split that actually splits

The app opens on Home — your folder’s shape, what changed since you last looked, and links pointing at notes that do not exist yet — instead of a hard-coded sample document.
Teach: hand the Brain something to read. Paste text or attach files, then read them in with one button.
Sources: where a page’s material came from, traced through the commit that absorbed it.
Split view stacks its panes on a tall, narrow screen rather than hiding the editor.
Startup view is a real setting: Home, last note, Brain or split editor.

v0.3.0

The vault as a brain, not a folder

Brain: a live map of every note, its tags, and the links between them.
Wiki-links, backlinks with context, and vault-wide search.
Changes: a read-only git review of what has been written while you were away.
PDF export, and HTML export that keeps its formatting.
Crash recovery — unsaved work is snapshotted and handed back rather than lost.